Why “Dover Beach” is a Famous Poem
Exploring faith and doubt in Matthew Arnold’s timeless stanzas.
Published in
7 min readJul 12, 2021
In Matthew Arnold’s “Dover Beach,” the timeless conflict between land and sea represents not only Arnold’s individual melancholy over the decline of faith but also the larger human condition: an inability to compromise the transient illusions of imagination with the “grating roar” (l. 9) of reality.
